Dr. Brad Ringeisen

Deputy Director

Dr. Brad Ringeisen joined DARPA as the Deputy Director of BTO in December 2016.

Before coming to DARPA, Dr. Ringeisen was the Head of the Bioenergy and Biofabrication Section at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) where he oversaw diverse research programs including the development and application of laser-assisted printing approaches to biology, development of organs-on-a-chip, microbial energy harvesting and extracellular electron transfer, as well as microbial discovery and microbiome characterization. His personal research focused on using a variety of novel laser-based processing tools to deposit patterns and 3D structures of biological materials including living cells, fixed tissue, solid-phase environmental samples, and biopolymers. He was also the Chief Technology Officer for the Defense Department's Advanced Technology Biofabrication Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr. Ringeisen was detailed at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Joint Science and Technology Office as a science and technology manager, where he oversaw the development of field-forward diagnostic technology with wireless connectivity to the cloud.

Dr. Ringeisen is a pioneer in the field of live cell printing, having demonstrated the first living bacteria and mammalian cell printing experiment using modified laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) technology in the early 2000s. He is a named inventor on thirteen patents, eight involving modifications to LIFT for biological applications. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has edited a book on cell and organ printing. Throughout his career he has worked across the Department of Defense (DoD) research enterprise having performed research for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, DARPA, and DTRA, in addition to his internal programs at NRL.

Dr. Ringeisen received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Physical Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Wake Forest University. He was named the DoD Lab Scientist of the Quarter in December 2015 for his achievements in applying bioprinting to the fields of tissue engineering and microbial ecology.

Programs

The widespread use of antibiotics has led to the emergence of antibiotic resistance in many pathogenic bacteria. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infections caused by these bacteria now pose urgent and serious threats to public health.

Novel chemical and biological weapons have historically been mass-produced within a year of discovery. Using current methods and technologies, researchers would require decades of study to gain a cellular-level understanding of how new threat agents exert their effects. This temporal gap between threat emergence, mechanistic understanding and potential treatment leaves U.S. forces vulnerable.

The Biological Control program seeks to build new capabilities for the control of biological systems across scales—from nanometers to centimeters, seconds to weeks, and biomolecules to populations of organisms—using embedded controllers made of biological parts to program system-level behavior.

Recent DARPA research through the Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals program has demonstrated the ability to accelerate production of millions of doses of vaccine using novel plant-based methods. Clinical trials, however, for vaccines, drugs or other biologics cannot be initiated without preclinical evidence of their safety in humans. Human safety and drug performance is not always effectively predicted through animal testing. And the Department of Defense needs to rapidly develop and field safe and effective medical countermeasures against biological threats to warfighters.

The Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program aims to develop an implantable neural interface able to provide advanced signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the brain and electronics.

Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) seeks to advance the pace and effectiveness of a specific kind of learning—cognitive skills training—through the precise activation of peripheral nerves that can in turn promote and strengthen neuronal connections in the brain. TNT will pursue development of a platform technology to enhance learning of a wide range of cognitive skills, with a goal of reducing the cost and duration of the Defense Department’s extensive training regimen, while improving outcomes.

Selected DARPA Achievements

In the early days of DARPA’s work on stealth technology, Have Blue, a prototype of what would become the F-117A, first flew successfully in 1977. The success of the F-117A program marked the beginning of the stealth revolution, which has had enormous benefits for national security.

ARPA research played a central role in launching the Information Revolution. The agency developed and furthered much of the conceptual basis for the ARPANET—prototypical communications network launched nearly half a century ago—and invented the digital protocols that gave birth to the Internet.

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